


Fade Away

by sharonscarters



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 11:21:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17405972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharonscarters/pseuds/sharonscarters
Summary: She's standing in the graveyard, with nothing but the ghosts of those who had once been. Until she isn't.





	Fade Away

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is totally freaking random, I have no idea what's happening. Tell me what you guys think?

A cold breeze blew back her short hair, stung her eyes, made goosebumps rise on her arms. She felt the urge to bundle up, to wrap her arms around herself, to close her eyes, sit down under the tree not too far away.

She didn’t move.

She knew she should have grabbed a jacket, they were all too small now, she knew everything she wore these days was small. She ought to go buy some new clothes. Did she even have money for that? Still, a tight jacket would’ve been better than a thin cotton shirt. She knew she’d left as bare as she could on purpose. Maybe most of what hurt her she did on purpose. A masochist.  
“You’re a freak,” Lexei used to say. “Fucked up. And the best way to get away with being fucked up is to dress up like a hero.”

It made a lot of sense when she thought about it. A lot of the things he said tended to make sense. She’d found out much about him these past few months. Or was it the other way around? She’d shown him her face (he hadn’t seemed too surprised), let him help her figure out the murders, they even talked sometimes, about real things.

If she saw him now she’d tell him, she’d tell him that she understood why he hated her. The idea of her. What she stood for. Because she hated it too. ~~She hated herself, too~~. He’d laugh though, he could never believe she could wrap her brain around anything complex, anything real.

Again, he was probably right.

She spotted someone, from the corner of her eye, standing a few feet away. Another breeze, she physically shivered this time and curled her shoulders inward. Would he come closer? Would he just stand there? Was it even him? Her mind thought up an endless well of questions whenever she focused on it. Should she sit or continue standing? Should she leave? Should she burn the house she lived in, which wasn’t really hers no not really it was just a lie like everything in her life had been a lie or should she just run away? Leave this city to burn like it deserves, every woman, man, child. **Everyone**.

“Oof, imagine if your precious city could hear you say that?” His voice was… His. How could she describe his voice? Like you’re at a carnival and you don’t want to be there but you have to laugh when their ball misses the shot because you can’t do anything else. His voice was rain splattering on the windows and your hair is wet and you take a bite out of a warm roll. That was his voice.

“So you talk now?” Her throat burned when she spoke, like she hadn’t drank water for a while and had been reciting words for longer than she should have.

“I always wondered how someone who hated this place so much would sacrifice everything for it.” He drew closer, she turned to look at him fully but he was gone. She felt him on the other side now.

“Its called responsibility. Morality. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” And then she sucked in a deep breath and let her shoulders slump. She didn’t have it in her to be spiteful, petty. She searched inside her for some emotion, any emotion but couldn’t find anything except numbness. A numbness that hurt. When she breathed in, it disappeared inside her and left her wanting.

“Was it moral when you killed for the first time? Was it moral when you felt yourself connecting with the people you put in jail?” He huffed out a laugh. “You really are a slap in the face to people like you.”

She thought of something to say but her mind gave up on her when she came to the conclusion that he wasn’t wrong. She was being specially agreeable today, wasn’t she? She forced her fingers to free themselves from the fist they were tightly pushed in to and spread them. She loosened her body and dropped her head, only a little. The next time the gust of wind came it blew through her, pushing inside her, cutting through everything in its way and appearing on the other side, triumphant.

“You’re all alone. We both know you don’t have it in you to go out and fight everyday like you used to. So what will you do? You gave up on your life to do this, left everyone you loved, so what do you have now? Who are you without this city?”

A memory. Forgotten. Sucked away from people’s heads and released so it could be free, so it could disappear. So she could disappear. “Go to another city? Another place you’ll need to rid of the dirt and grime? How much more will you throw away for them? For faceless people who don’t think about you unless you’re in front of them saving their lives and call you a criminal when you’re not.”

She swayed. Maybe she could disappear too, fade away. There was no one who would remember her, everyone who cared enough was dead. She was nothing, no one. She could do anything and no one would bat an eye. Maybe that was the problem. No one would remember her. If she faded away right now, no one would wake up tomorrow and wonder, _where is she?_

“Yes, I made sure of that. Didn’t I?” She imagined a self assured smile on his face, the one she used to look at and felt all her insecurities fade away, he was just like that. No one could resist him, even when she was a kid. Her dad once told her she used to stop crying when he’d take her in his arms. That she’d stare at him with big brown eyes in wonder and not make a sound. He said he never seemed bothered by it, always offered that smile and went about doing whatever he needed to do, holding me in one arm.

“Why?” She whispered but didn’t even hear herself.

“You know why.”

She felt helpless, she was intimately familiar with the feeling these days. “No, no that isn’t the truth, that isn’t enough. I want to _know why_.”

“You asked me that too.” A sigh. “And now you’ll ask yourself the same thing for the rest of your miserably long life.”

A big, sticky, unwilling tear glided down her cheek and stayed there. “How could you claim to love me and then be the reason I’m all alone?”

He grew closer, so close she felt his warm breath on her skin. She didn’t dare look. He couldn’t leave her, it didn’t matter if it was him, the one who’d destroyed her, she needed someone, she needed _him_ to not leave her.

“Oh, baby. You would need to have someone to be alone in the first place.”

She recoiled, like she had received a particularly nasty punch to the gut. It felt addicting. To feel something after weeks and weeks of numbness. She bent over, trying to catch her breath like she had just ran a marathon.

She tried to straighten up. Ended up falling completely, knees digging in to the moist ground. His hand in her hair, long fingers smoothing them back.

“Did I– Do I have you?” She asked in a voice that was pathetically small. She began to shake and her eyes stung like she was about to cry but she probably wouldn’t.

“Always, baby.” He leaned down and kissed her head. She let out a dry sob and turned to look at him.

The graveyard was empty.

Her eyes grew distant and she absently replayed a memory in her head, clutching his hair, looking at him, screaming so loud she could hear nothing else until she flicked her wrist and a crack cut through all the noise. She had fallen then, boneless, empty. Nothing had changed since.

When she blinked, she was standing where she had a while ago, no tears, no hand in her hair, no one and nothing.

The way it always had been.

 

 


End file.
